How do I plan my crowdfunding campaign?
Preparation is the key to a successful crowdfunding campaign. If you prepare your campaign well beforehand, you can use the entire crowdfunding time for communication. This safes you time and raises the chances for success significantly. Consider the following points when drafting your communication plan:
Stakeholders
- Collect ideas - together with your team - who could be interested in your project and would be willing to support it. Support could be direct, in form of a donation, but also indirect: by motivating others to donate.
- Consider the immediate environment of your project as well as the broader network.
- Think about how you want to address each stakeholder. Which topics, activities or areas of your project are particularly interesting or relevant for the respective stakeholder?
- Put yourself in the position of the stakeholder: What would motivate you to donate for the project or to cover it in the media?
- Write down your closest contact persons (friends, family, acquaintances) and their contact details
- Prepare different e-mail distribution lists.
- Look up and select interested journalists and other persons that could cover the project (TV, radio, internet).
- Look for multipliers, that are interested in your topic and can share it (bloggers, active users with large networks on Facebook and Twitter)
Messages
- Create 2-3 messages that are catchy and that explain the topic/the appeal.
- Prepare different kinds of texts in advance!
- Mailings (launch, general request, thank you, ...)
- Facebook/Twitter-Posts
- Press releases
- personal mailings for friends and family
- …
Communication channels
- Consider the different communication channels which you want to use!
- telephone
- social media
- website
- personal communication
- e-mails
- …
Measures
- Think about concrete measures!
- Newsletters
- Facebook-Posts /Twitter-Posts
- Events
- Press conference
- Press release
- Blog entries
- telephone calls
- …
Time plan
Draw up a time plan!
- When should the measures be conducted?
- Who is responsible for which measure?
- How often will the measures be repeated?
- Are you planning start and closing events?